2026 CSS Features You Must Know (Shipped Late 2025–Now)

January 16, 2026
Futuristic illustration titled “2026 CSS Features You Should Prepare For” showing modern CSS concepts like @scope, anchor positioning, scroll-driven animations, grid lanes, and accessibility-first UI.

CSS has been evolving fast, but the shift happening now is deeper than “new syntax.” Late 2025 into early 2026 brought features that reduce JavaScript glue code, simplify UI state, and make design systems more expressive.

This post is a practical roundup of the 2026 CSS features you should start preparing for, with examples you can actually use. I’m focusing on what shipped recently, what’s stabilizing, and what’s worth adopting as progressive enhancement. If you haven’t read it yet, this builds directly on CSS features you must know from 2025, which laid much of the groundwork for what we’re seeing now.

TL;DR

CSS in 2026 is about reducing JavaScript, increasing native UI intelligence, and building scalable design systems. Key features to prepare for include:

  • CSS if() for real conditional logic inside property values
  • CSS Grid Lanes for native masonry-style layouts
  • Anchor positioning for tooltips, dropdowns, and popovers without fragile offsets
  • Scroll-driven and scroll-triggered animations to replace JS scroll listeners
  • Container scroll-state queries for sticky headers, shadows, and snapping states
  • @scope to avoid global CSS conflicts and specificity wars
  • @starting-style for clean enter transitions without flashes
  • Typed attr() to drive styles directly from HTML attributes
  • sibling-index() for staggered animations without extra classes
  • Modern color and typography tools like OKLCH, relative colors, light-dark(), and text-wrap

If you build component-driven UIs or design systems, these features are not experimental toys. They are the foundation of how modern CSS is meant to be written going forward.

Theme of 2026: CSS is becoming state-aware, context-aware, and layout-smart, so we can ship cleaner UI with fewer JS workarounds.

Quick Table of Contents

1) CSS if(): Real conditional logic in property values

For years, we’ve used preprocessors, utility class toggles, or JavaScript to do “conditional styling.” Now CSS is growing its own built-in logic with the if() function.

The key idea is simple. You can pick a value based on a condition such as a media query, a feature query, or a style query. This fits naturally into modern authoring workflows, especially if you already use productivity techniques like those covered in Emmet tips and tricks for beginners.

/* Example: choose spacing based on user motion preference */
.card {
  transition-duration: if(
    media(prefers-reduced-motion: reduce): 0ms;
    else: 180ms;
  );
}

Why this matters:

  • Design systems get cleaner. Token rules can live in CSS instead of JS conditionals.
  • Progressive enhancement is easier. If a browser doesn’t support it, you can feature-query it and fall back.
  • Fewer “ternary hacks.” Less computed-style logic in JS.

Reference: MDN: if() function and Can I use: CSS if().

2) CSS Grid Lanes: Native masonry layouts

Masonry layouts have been historically painful. People used columns, JS layout libraries, or heavy DOM hacks. Now the platform is moving toward a real solution: CSS Grid Lanes (often described as masonry or waterfall layouts).

When this becomes more widely supported, it will be the cleanest way to build galleries, card grids, and media-heavy pages without manual positioning. This works best when paired with strong semantic structure, like the patterns discussed in 10 must-use HTML tags in 2025.

/* Conceptual example: masonry-style gallery */
.gallery {
  display: grid-lanes;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(4, 1fr);
  gap: 16px;
}

.gallery > * {
  /* items of mixed heights pack naturally */
}

Reference: WebKit: Introducing CSS Grid Lanes and Can I use: CSS Grid Lanes.

3) CSS Anchor Positioning: Tooltips, dropdowns, and popovers without “position hacks”

Anchor positioning gives CSS a native way to “tether” one element to another. Think tooltips, dropdown menus, contextual popovers, floating UI, and anchored labels.

This matters because it reduces layout bugs, avoids fragile offsets, and makes UI components more portable across layouts.

Reference: MDN: Anchor positioning and Can I use: CSS Anchor Positioning.

4) Scroll-driven animations: view-timeline and scroll-timeline

Scroll-driven animations let you map animation progress to scroll progress. That means animations can advance from 0% to 100% based on scrolling, not time.

This is the modern replacement for a lot of “scroll listener” code, and it’s typically smoother and easier to reason about.

/* Basic scroll-driven animation example */
.hero {
  view-timeline-name: --hero;
  view-timeline-axis: block;
}

.hero__title {
  animation-name: rise;
  animation-timeline: --hero;
  animation-range: entry 0% cover 50%;
}

@keyframes rise {
  from { transform: translateY(16px); opacity: 0; }
  to   { transform: translateY(0);    opacity: 1; }
}

Reference: MDN: Scroll-driven animations.

5) Scroll-triggered animations: time-based animations triggered by scroll

Scroll-triggered animations are the next step. Instead of mapping animation progress to scroll position, they trigger a time-based animation when a scroll threshold is crossed.

This gives you an ergonomic “animate on enter” model that historically required JS observers or animation libraries.

Reference: Chrome Developers: scroll-triggered animations.

6) Container scroll-state queries: style sticky and snapped states with CSS

This one is quietly massive for UI polish. Scroll-state queries let CSS detect states like:

  • stuck (a sticky element is actively stuck)
  • snapped (scroll snapping is engaged)
  • scrollable (a container can scroll)
  • scrolled (a container has been scrolled from its origin)

That means you can style headers differently once they “stick,” show shadows only when scroll has happened, or change controls when a carousel is snapped.

/* Example: give sticky header a shadow only when it's stuck */
.header {
  position: sticky;
  top: 0;
  container-type: scroll-state;
}

@container scroll-state((stuck: top)) {
  .header {
    box-shadow: 0 8px 24px rgba(0,0,0,0.18);
    backdrop-filter: blur(10px);
  }
}

Reference: MDN: Container scroll-state queries and Chrome Developers: scroll-state queries.

7) CSS @scope: real scoping without specificity wars

If you build component-based UI, you’ve felt the pain of global CSS collisions and selector specificity battles. @scope is the platform’s answer: a way to apply styles only within a defined subtree, without coupling selectors to fragile DOM structure.

@scope (.card) to (.card__footer) {
  :scope .button {
    font-weight: 600;
  }
}

Reference: MDN: @scope.

8) @starting-style: enter transitions that don’t flash

Enter animations used to require keyframes or JS toggles because transitions can’t normally “start from nothing” when an element is inserted. @starting-style fixes that by defining a start state for the first style update.

.toast {
  opacity: 1;
  transform: translateY(0);
  transition: opacity 200ms ease, transform 200ms ease;
}

@starting-style {
  .toast {
    opacity: 0;
    transform: translateY(12px);
  }
}

Reference: MDN: @starting-style.

9) Typed attr(): use HTML attributes as typed CSS values

attr() used to be mostly limited to pseudo-elements. The modern direction is much more powerful: typed attr() lets you read HTML attributes as real CSS types, not just strings.

/* Example: drive styles via data attributes */
.badge {
  --hue: attr(data-hue type(<number>));
  background: oklch(0.72 0.18 calc(var(--hue) * 1deg));
}

Reference: MDN: attr() and Chrome Developers: advanced attr().

10) sibling-index() and sibling-count(): staggering, formulas, and patterns

These functions allow CSS to “know” an element’s position among its siblings and use that number in calculations. That unlocks clean patterns like staggered transitions without extra classes.

/* Example: stagger a list without adding classes */
.item {
  transition-delay: calc((sibling-index() - 1) * 40ms);
  transition: transform 200ms ease, opacity 200ms ease;
}

Reference: MDN: sibling-index() and MDN: sibling-count().

11) Modern color workflows: relative colors, light-dark(), OKLCH, and color-mix()

Modern CSS color is finally “design system native.” The big wins are:

  • OKLCH for perceptual color control
  • Relative colors for generating variations from a base token
  • light-dark() for automatic theme-friendly color selection
  • color-mix() for blending tokens without precomputed palettes
:root {
  --brand: oklch(0.62 0.16 35);
  --brand-soft: color-mix(in oklch, var(--brand), white 65%);
}

/* Relative color example: derive a darker variant */
.button {
  background: var(--brand);
}

.button:hover {
  background: oklch(from var(--brand) calc(l - 0.08) c h);
}

Reference: MDN: Using relative colors, MDN: OKLCH, and W3C: CSS Color Module Level 5.

12) Typography upgrades: text-wrap, nicer paragraphs, better headings

Typography is getting real platform love. Two values worth calling out are:

  • text-wrap: balance for headings and short blocks
  • text-wrap: pretty for better paragraph wrapping (use with care)
h1, h2, .hero-title {
  text-wrap: balance;
}

.prose p {
  text-wrap: pretty;
}

Reference: LogRocket: balance vs pretty and MDN: text-wrap.

How to adopt these safely in production

My rule is simple: adopt new CSS as progressive enhancement. Build a solid baseline first, then layer on the modern features inside feature queries.

/* Baseline */
.card {
  border-radius: 16px;
}

/* Enhancement */
@supports (selector(:has(*))) {
  .card:has(.card__badge) {
    padding-top: 20px;
  }
}

Practical tips:

  • Use feature queries for anything you can’t guarantee across your audience.
  • Prefer token-driven patterns so your system stays consistent as features evolve.
  • Keep the JS. Just stop using it for work CSS can now do natively.

Final Thought

2026 CSS is not about flexing new tricks. It’s about writing less JavaScript, shipping cleaner UI state, and building systems that scale. If you work in design systems or component-heavy apps, these features are worth tracking now.

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